In our daily meditations on "Who is Jesus?" we have explored Jesus' indirect claims to divinity. Now, we will examine Christ’s direct assertions of being God; For instance, there was a second time Jesus appeared to His disciples after His resurrection, and this time Thomas was present and finally convinced:
26A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” 27Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.” 28Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!” 29Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:26-29).
Jesus didn’t say, “Hey, hang on a second; you’ve gone a bit too far there." Instead, He gently rebuked them for being slow to grasp the obvious, saying, "Stop doubting and believe" (v. 27). At another time, after Christ was arrested and stood before the high priest and elders, He was clear about His identity:
Again the high priest asked him, “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?” 62“I am,” said Jesus. “And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.” 63The high priest tore his clothes. “Why do we need any more witnesses?” he asked. 64“You have heard the blasphemy. What do you think?” They all condemned him as worthy of death (Mark 14:61-64).
You might have missed it. When Jesus said the words “I Am” in verse 62 above, this was the Greek version of the Hebrew name that God used for Himself: “And God said to Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shall you say to the children of Israel, I AM has sent me to you” (Exodus 3:14). If you only had one chance to bring people to a passage of Scripture to illustrate a direct claim by Jesus to be God, take them to John’s Gospel:
30I and the Father are one.” 31Again the Jews picked up stones to stone him, 32but Jesus said to them, “I have shown you many great miracles from the Father. For which of these do you stone me?” 33“We are not stoning you for any of these,” replied the Jews, “but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God” (John 10:30-33).
Claims such as someone saying, "He is One with the Father," need to be tested because people make all kinds of assertions. The mere fact that someone claims to be important does not mean the claim is valid. Some mentally unstable individuals are known to be deluded, believing they are Napoleon, the Pope, or the Antichrist. So, how can we evaluate people's claims? Jesus claimed to be the unique Son of God and God made flesh. There are three logical possibilities. If the claims were untrue, then either He knew they were false, in which case He would be an imposter and an evil person for trying to deceive people. That's the first possibility. Or He did not know, which would mean He was deluded; indeed, He would be mad. That is the second possibility. The third possibility is that the claims were true.
The writer C.S. Lewis put it like this:
"A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic, on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg, or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse…but let us not come up with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."[1]
Keith Thomas
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Taken from the complete study found in the series, I Am New To This, here’s the link to the study: Who Is Jesus?
YouTube video teachings at: https://www.youtube.com/@keiththomas7/videos
[1] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, First Published by Geoffrey Bles, 1952.
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